Despite increased recognition that prospective memory is important for everyday life, this topic continues to receive little attention by memory researchers in general and by aging and memory researchers in particular. Part of the problem has been a lack of compelling theoretical perspectives to stimulate and guide research. The focus of the present project is to develop a theoretical understanding of prospective memory mechanisms and processes and to understand how aging affects these components. Our analysis focuses around storage and retrieval--stages for which prospective memory processes seem especially likely to diverge from retrospective memory processes. Successful prospective remembering requires that to-be-performed actions are activated when the appropriate time or stimulus occurs. This analysis suggests that prospective memory retrieval appears to be more spontaneous. We examine the role of encoding specificity on prospective memory retrieval as well as develop and test two models differ in the accordingly differ in the their predictions regarding age differences. We develop the view that like retrospective memory, different retrieval dynamics are involved in different kinds of prospective memory tasks and that these different retrieval requirements have important implications for understanding aging effects. Specifically, tasks that provide little environmental support for remembering (i.e., time-based tasks) seem to be especially difficult for older subjects. In examining age-related deficits on time-based tasks, we evaluate currently influential theories of aging, including those that attribute age deficits to problems in self-initiated retrieval, problems in a central inhibitory mechanism that result in increased mind wandering, and inaccuracies in time perception. Additionally, we test mnemonic techniques for reducing age differences on time-based prospective memory task, and we explore the role of noncognitive factors in prospective memory.